Tuesday, April 29, 2014

It was early October in 2009 when the President of the United States, Barrack Obama, got on board Air Force One and flew to Copenhagen so as to lobby the IOC in awarding the 2016 Olympic Games to his home town of Chicago. Never in the history of the games had a US President personally lobbied on behalf of an Olympic candidate city but his efforts were all for naught. The Olympic Games were awarded to Rio de Janeiro instead.

Most press outlets decried that the real reason Chicago lost was due to the intense acrimony the IOC had towards the USOC executives. (Yes, it is always abut the money with these guys). Apparently the USOC wanted to build an Olympic cable network and the IOC was not fond of having them do such a thing. But alas here they are, the IOC selected the wrong city, or "bought a lemon" so to speak and now and now they are going through the cathartic process know as buyers remorse.

And now, the "glorious summer" of the 2016 Games has become nothing short of a "winter of discontent" according to Vice President John Coates of the IOC:

"... Coates describing the Rio preparations as "the worst I have experienced" [...] He added that the host city Rio de Janeiro also had "social issues that need to be addressed".

The first Games on the South American continent have been plagued by delays, rising costs and bad communication between different levels of the Brazilian government and organisers, prompting criticism from international sports federations.

Brazil has been under the spotlight for the far more immediate concern of the football World Cup starting in June. Amid problems with stadium construction, labour unrest and security in other parts of the country, thousands of troops occupied Rio's slums in February to wrest them back from the control of drug gangs and criminals. ..."

• Bad communication between different levels of the Brazilian government and organizers: (Read as Rio has over-promised and is under delivering.)

• Thousands of troops to wrest back control from drug gangs: (Read as the police were not skilled enough so they were forced to bring in the army.)

The Next Summer Olympics will be held in Tokyo in 2020, a country that would better off spending any extra penny they can find in cleaning up what is arguably the biggest nuclear power disaster in history, Fukushima.

Mr John Coates, admit it. You should have picked Chicago, hmmm? Perhaps the IOC better move to a "Plan B" for both Rio and Tokyo?